


The Song of the Damned, All Full-Throated Bellows

by Lsusanna



Series: Seven Daughters of Fëanor AU [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Angst with no happy ending, Burning of the Ships at Losgar, Death Fic, Depression, F/M, First Age, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Mae might hear voices, Mental Instability, Oath of Fëanor, Rule 63, Second Kinslaying | Sack of Doriath, Sirion, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Third Kinslaying, celegorm needs to CALM DOWN, heed the depictions of violence warning, irredeemable angst, jury's out, let's tell it like it is, listen I have thangorodrim hcs, orc Maedhros, putting it lightly, seven daughters of fëanor au, that awkward moment where moryo pops out fo the woodwork and isn't a terrible person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 15:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6990514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lsusanna/pseuds/Lsusanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of Doom, and fate, and fruition--what better place to start than at the end?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Song of the Damned, All Full-Throated Bellows

**Author's Note:**

> Getting my feet wet in the silm fandom and the seven daughters of fëanor au at the same time. 
> 
> Beta'd by me, all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Goes by the canon that Orodreth is Finarfin's son, and one fo the Ambarussa dies at Losgar. I went with Amrod, but I realize there's some debate surrounding this. I've been assuming Melkor orc'd the elves by fucking with the fëa (soul), so I assume captives of Angband would have been subject to that process in some degree, even if inadvertently.

_Dying_

_Is an art, like everything else._

_I do it exceptionally well._

**_\--from Lady Lazarus, Sylvia Plath_ **

 

 

She has had very little to say for many years, and holds with her the memory of why, the memory of her death, the memory of how one Ambarussa dies and leaves the other to slow decay.

 

She doesn’t blame her, no; she blames _him_ , and is so very _vindicated_ when he burns himself away, too.

 

 But still alone, for all that she isn’t even here.

 

And so she remembers.

 

There is almost no difference between them, and very little distance, so Ambarussa feels when Ambarussa panics, when she burns, when she screams, when she fades. Remembers too being very… _annoyed_ at Maedhros for holding her back on the surf, remembers very vividly the blinding need to wade out and vault over the crumbling timbers of the ship and _find her_ , that has her kicking and clawing in her sister’s arms, so much so that before the end it takes all si—all five to hold her back.

 

(And oh, the _hypocrisy_ of all of them, to let one die and save the other when there is no ‘one’ and is no ‘other’, to dare to keep her back when _they_ loosed the moorings and _they_ dropped the torches—she catches Maglor, who set the first fire, on the side of the mouth with her foot so hard the blood _flies_ , and Celegorm, Celegorm she bites, because she came within range and because it fits; jerks her head back so violently Maedhros’ nose crunches audibly in her pretty face, she who did no more than stand silent and unmoving when it really mattered and now thinks she has a right to grab her about the waist and carry her away from herself—and so perhaps the annoyance isn’t one she merely remembers, perhaps she doesn’t care that three are dead and two are shadows and one—one.)

 

And that is how she remembers the cause of her silence, how she remembers her death, how she remembers Ambarussa dying and Ambarussa beginning to slip. The dead do not, after all, speak.

 

And so she knows, with authority, that Sirion is not death. Death is a violent thing—she would know that from living in Beleriand alone, but no, she learns the lesson she began being taught at the steady drip of her grandfather’s blood down the staircase in Formenos much, much earlier, before the sun even rises. Death is firsthand hyperventilation to secondhand panic, death is—death is looking down and wondering why she’s not blackened when her skin is burning and her fat is sizzling, and all that and she’s not dead yet she’s not even dying yet why can’t she just _die_ , and in her pain and in her fervor she forgets that when she dies not _all_ of her will go, and she just doesn’t count on the emptiness, the _emptiness_.  Death is spending a very long time ripped in half, picking apart the sloppy stitches every once in a while because feeling agony is better than feeling alone. They’ve been together for so long, she just doesn’t know what ‘alone’ feels like. She cannot fathom ‘alone’.  In the beginning, she spends her time casting the half-mind she has left out around her, searching, because she cannot comprehend ‘alone’. In the beginning, she screams, very loudly, because the only thing keeping her spirit from casting off ‘alone’ is the Oath.

 

Once she realizes she’s in the sights of many many crossbow bolts—well. Sirion is not death. She knows death. She should be relieved, but she is nothing, because what is there to feel? Ambarussa is, after all, already dead.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Caranthir is not known nor remembered for her level-headed judgements, her wise council, her merciful nature.

 

Caranthir is known and remembered as the dark, the easily angered, the caustic and incendiary, and in Valinor, in kinder times, she had been the unwitting edition to a trio, bookended by two red-headed flurries and driven mad by the enthusiasm of noise and motion.

 

The story of the Fëanorians is one almost everyone knows; seven becomes six, and two becomes one, but not until Thargelion is burned and her black lake poisoned does Caranthir understand what that truly means.

 

It begins with the Edain, with her, she of the infuriating challenge. If confided in, Maglor would smile in commiseration, appreciation of the verse. Curufin would think her silly, for painting her worldview in shades of any opinion but her own, and Celegorm would be unable to understand why she would value the opinion of one so much lesser. And Maedhros, Maedhros would likely understand most of all, if nothing could be gained from a stare that means _yes, yes; we damn ourselves, don’t we?_ But they would all be wrong, because Amras wouldn’t care. Amras would smile an indulgent smile, perch loose-limbed in a chair, blood and dirt under her fingernails and a vacant world all her own in her eyes. Amras snarls when touched, scratches when Caranthir tries to untangle her hair, rarely if ever comes in from the trees. Amras is only approachable when called Ambarussa; Amras comes at Caranthir with knives when called Ambarussa. Amras watches her sleep, she doesn’t know how often because she doesn’t always wake, but when she does, Amras either keeps watching, or smiles and leaves, or unravels, tearstained and muddy.

 

It began with Haleth, maybe, with realizing that _yes, Fëanorian, you can be wrong_. Enlighteningly, horribly wrong. But not until she is defending Amon Ereb in close quarters with her sister does Caranthir realize how right the woman is, and how terrible she is, how terribly, terribly wrong.

 

( _And what’ll you do_? Haleth said. _What is there we can do_? Caranthir replied.)

 

At Alqualondë, Caranthir killed a child. A youth, maybe more accurately, but hardly of age, and so horrifically young. She’d like to say she didn’t mean to; Alqualondë was confusion and almost nothing else. (Alqualondë was blood—unjustified, unsolicited, and nothing else.) But her hand and her body had acted before her sight. She hadn’t spent time on him, pulled her blade free and perpetuated the madness, and not remembered until much later. Is that meaning to? Is age any different than the other Teleri bodies piled because of her? Does meaning to mean anything at all?

 

(She shrugged. _Anything, I suppose. But what will you do_? Caranthir hadn’t answered.)

 

In any case, Caranthir is much less free with her judgements in later days. Much less quick to assume her House in the right. Much too aware of the true nature of their Oath, refracted every day in their small one, their child, the one who exists half sundered from the world for no reason, no fault but their own, they that should have protected the Ambarussa, their two laughing innocents.

 

And by the time they march on Doriath, Caranthir’s opinions are scattered. She is not so inclined to think the people of Doriath in the wrong, for all that the Fëanorians are wronged; she isn’t so ready to assign innocence. Not that any of them are, really, except perhaps Celegorm and Curufin. Curufin, because she wouldn’t care even if she thought they were, and Celegorm because she hasn’t forgotten Lúthien, forgiven Eöl. (Amras hasn’t cared about anything in years.) But that has no bearing. What remains is that they are Oath-bound; want or no, they do what they must, or doom themselves to Darkness.

 

But Oath or no, by the time they march on Doriath, Caranthir is consumed with thoughts of what she will do. It is no equation she is faced with; so many different questions, none having one right answer.

 

By the time the assault on Doriath begins, it is not a question of what she will do, but what she won’t. Will she doom herself? Her sisters? In the clarity of battle, Caranthir is of the opinion that if damning themselves is their only salvation, they deserve what they swore themselves to.

 

She fights, she does, as her Oath compels, all parries and landing no blows. She bleeds; she falls.

 

Years ago, lifetimes ago, Caranthir had walked through woods that were hers, and also Haleth’s, and now no one’s. She remembers very vividly the smell of pine, the petrichor, the sun slanting through gaps in the canopy and turning her hair blond and her eyes amber. She remembers when she and her sisters could laugh without ash on their teeth and sardonicism in their throats.

 

Caranthir, on her knees, looks up into the eyes of the one whose sword is raised for the blow that will be the last she receives. There is blood on her snarl, in her wheeze, in the rattle of her lungs. There is blood on the floor underneath her. She glares up into the helm-hooded eyes of the soldier of Doriath, and she throws her axe at his feet, like an insult, like defiance. It is suddenly of paramount importance that he knows he is not doing this to her, that she is doing this herself. The sword descends.

 

Nothing owed, nothing given, nothing taken. There are worse ways to die.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

When Curufin fights, she fights as if every move is meticulously preplanned. Celegorm has never known her sister to dance, even in Valinor, having never been the kind, but in battle it is a near thing. Even at Alqualondë, the Nirnaeth—the tempo merely acquired a more frenetic pace amid the confusion, the steps a brutal cast, like some ritualistic rite of the Hunter come back to haunt her from over the sea. Maglor may be their showperson, but Curufin runs a close second.

 

And Celegorm, Celegorm is as she has always been. A predator. Blood is blood. It fills the nose and buzzes the skull no matter the source, the color; barbed blades will do to the innards of a stag what they will to those of the orcs, the Secondborn, the Firstborn. The weight of the spear varies only in how it is held.

 

Not to say that she practices the blithe, business-like ambivalence with which her sister pursues the Oath; better to say the scent of the Hunter’s wood has yet to stop clinging. Better to say she does not differentiate. Better to say that the euphoria from the fire-lit dances, from the hum of the Hunter, from the bloody parts worn like garlands in the half-light and the smoke curled like specters—it has yet to run its course through her blood, if only she ignores that its purpose was to honor the dead of Yavanna as well as the hunt. Better to say she misuses—she, the Doomed. 

 

So while Curufin will never achieve the fear because she never learned the bloodlust, Celegorm’s finish will never have the finesse, will never look planned. It is a fallacy, of course; there is now way she could have expected the halberd just outside her field of vision, or the archers waiting behind a wall, or the black and mangled not-quite-dead thing of Morgoth lashing out from the corpses strewn across the grass, but it has no bearing on her presentation. Death is still calmly meted out with the utmost grace. It suits her. And so deep in the bowels of Menegroth, its absence is how Celegorm knows something is amiss.

 

Curufin does not drop her weapons with ringing clatters. When she speaks, her voice is as smooth as Maglor’s, if not as mellifluous, and it runs with the silk of their father’s. She does not cough like a seal barks, wet and dripping, chased by a gurgling inhalation. She does not stumble and she does not fall, does not land in a tangled heap of limbs, pinned underneath her or sticking out at odd angles. Curufin is not unceremoniously taken by an unlucky slash across the throat, but she is.

 

And Celegorm, Celegorm is too harried herself to prevent it, is too far away to stop the near-projectile bleeding, can do nothing but clear the corridor of the dark-elves of Doriath with a roar so strong the closest few flinch stumbling back into their companions, Celegorm’s own soldiers included.

 

But too late, too late, because by the time she kneels beside her, unceremoniously taken is all her sister is; a corpse strewn across the floor, open-mouthed and open-eyed, staring in two slightly different directions. Nothing. There is nothing, nothing like the scream from a burning ship, like the clamor of battle on a burning field, like the dead eyes of a nephew, a dog, Finarfin’s secondborn.

 

( _We’re unconquerable, you and I_ , she had said, long ago. _Hubris_ , Curufin had countered, but she too was smiling, and what fools, to think that the folly of it had been in the raze of Himlad.)

 

It takes Celegorm not long at all to find blame.

 

There is no sound in the world beyond the echo of her breath in her ears as Celegorm closes her sister’s eyes, hands heavy with loss. Her middle and index fingers continue down Curufin’s cheeks, thumb running from her philtrum to her chin, trailing lines of red; it still chugs steadily from the wound in her neck, the growing red pool on the floor a vivid halo against dark wet hair and graying skin. Celegorm paints her face the same way, in the ancient custom she forsook but never abandoned, and if she tastes the copper from where the line runs over her lips, well. That is its design.

 

Fëanorians are no strangers to loss, no strangers to vengeance, and that is what Celegorm takes her men to go find, and what the King of Doriath intercepts her in having, the Silmaril bold around his neck.

 

Dior, Dior is a good fighter, and Dior has the beauty and power of a threefold race, but Celegorm—Celegorm is not new to battle, and Celegorm is brutal, and Celegorm is Oath-bound, but more, Celegorm has _lost_ , and Celegorm is _wronged_ , and Dior nearly dies.

 

But Dior is wronged, and his children are screaming, and Celegorm has already killed his wife, and Dior is _desperate_. And Celegorm is the better warrior, maybe, but Celegorm is fell and fey, and Celegorm’s eyes _burn_ from the light of her father’s work, Oath-bound and hell-bound and so very, very Doomed. So with a yell, Thingol's heir thrusts his sword forward and takes her through the abdomen, jarring and sudden and surprisingly cold. The blade goes just all the way through. Celegorm can feel the tip lifting her mail from her body, as her bloody spear slips from leaden fingers.

 

For a moment, Dior seems as shocked at his success as she is, but the moment it takes for Celegorm to get _angry_ is a quicker one; she takes a dirk in one hand and Dior’s in the other, his sword hilt with it, and with bloodied teeth bared she yanks him closer. The dagger plunges neatly into the eye of the King of Doriath up to the hilt. Threads of red-tinged liquid run down his near-blindingly fair face. His mouth stays open in a small, surprised ‘o’.

 

In death, his grip tightens, if anything, and when she pulled him closer she pulled his sword deeper, and so when Dior trips back, Celegorm falls with him, landing heavy on her knees. She leans forward, bowing over the dead king’s sword, her forehead resting on his wrist. Rivulets of her blood have run down the metal, coating the hilt, and dripped from her mouth, over Dior’s hand. Celegorm dies this way, the Fair curled around the Fair, copper in her nose and copper on her tongue. The Silmaril is inches from her face.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

There are many reasons for the death of Maedhros. Reasons, yes, because it is not accident, or vindication, or Doom; not fade or violent wound. It is choice. Willing given, willingly taken. And so there are many reasons.

 

Perhaps in a fit of spoiled pique the Kinslayer ends herself when she is rejected by her long-sought prize, her victory left incomplete. Perhaps she is too soft-hearted to stand the just pain of Varda’s hallowing upon her murderer’s hand. Perhaps in her twisted mind, she thinks an end of her choosing is something she is owed. Perhaps in her warped and wearied sense of self, she thinks it justice; one she would not suffer to be handed down by the Valar, but one she would deign to bestow upon herself.

 

Or perhaps it is the guilt. _Kinslayer, Kinslayer_ , dances the echo, like a song, like the start of a poem. The Doom of Alqualondë, the choice of Doriath, the horror of Sirion. The blood-curdling screams of Amrod as she burns, the ear-shattering shrieks of Amras on the shore. _Moved only to that which you feel you must. How terrible to think that that is what circumventing looks like._

 

And all to reclaim the Silmarils. Bloody death and brutal treason—a steep a price to live with, a reason enough.

 

Enough, too, is the shunning of her father’s works, the stumble she took that resulted in the drop and shatter of her responsibility and his legacy. His youngest children bent in bloody pools upon the ground; a sharp shame to ring in his eldest’s ears. _Are you really surprised, Oath-taker, Oath-breaker? How you excel at keeping promises._

 

Maybe in the fulfillment of her oath, the freeing of her sisters’ souls from the Darkness they swore too, Maedhros too is freed. Perhaps she has been waiting for this opportunity for years. Now she, the tired, the so very, very tired, can find silence, find rest.

 

Perhaps she has been waiting for this; now she, the lonely, can reunite with he whom she loves, whom she misses, whom she killed—and surely, he would understand; surely, he would see neither the weakness nor the past, he who understands, he who is the sun. _Aye, the sun, eclipsed in white light. Oh, how you excel at keeping promises!_

 

 _Perhaps the futility?_   _Ever you fail, and now there is no redeeming._  

 

A worthy theory.

 

Ages worth of plans and fights and deaths; the loss of the youngest ones, her sisters, her joys, her wards, only to be spurned by that which they sought with such fervor, and remain unfulfilled; the Oath will live forever, as long as Eärendil sails through the sky. Fëanor and his daughters will wait, blind, in the Darkness, none succored and none saved. And so why, then, had she tried, why had she dragged Maglor with her to further taint in the slaying of the guards of the last two Silmarils? _In all fairness, you are moved only to that which you feel you must_.

 

Perhaps at the end of her road looking back, Maedhros cannot remember who she used to be, only a shadow whispered through the trees, carried on the vague memory of cool summer nights. She who drove a people into the ground for a poisonous promise, she who set cities screaming—and no light, no light, but she knows blood, knew enough in that hole they put her in to kill by feel, and does she have the nerve to call it survival? —this person is sundered from the first. Perhaps Maedhros does not recognize who she has become.

 

_Have you not learned that delusions are earned? You know; you know._

 

Maedhros does not _like_ who she has become.

 

Is she weak, then, for not trying to repair herself—and oh, has she not heard that before, had the sun not desperately entreated her to try? If all it is, then, is weakness, if all she does is run from her fight, does she care? Maedhros already knows she is weak, has a history of taking things she does not deserve to staunch the bleeding, the terrible bleeding.

 

But, does she care?

 

_And are you not bleeding still?_

 

Can she live with herself, knowing she is an evil worthy of burning? _Are you truly surprised?_

 

Is she? Is she truly? No.

 

Is she to blame, then? Not many could live without knowing whether or not they are burned for their deeds or for their spirit listing too far to one side. Perhaps Maedhros would rather die than wonder if her touch is not suffered because she is not rightly Quendi, not anymore, no more than those taken and twisted by Morgoth and whom no one ever branded her Kinslayer for slaughtering in droves.

 

Perhaps she would rather kill herself than know she is burned for the stretch of her pupils, the twitch in her ears, the cant of her canines; because she is unclean, because she is not whole. _No light, no light, but their blood in your mouth anyway, those that were as trapped as you. Where do you think it began?_ Condescension. What a comfort, the familiar—and is it a voice, her voice, the echo? If she doesn’t know by now, she never will.

 

There are so many, many reasons Maedhros could have, as she stumbles to her knees on the cracked, ruined earth, meters away from the fissure in its surface, it’s heat in her face. But all she can see, to the exclusion of all else, though the light from the hallowed jewel scalds her eyes, is her blackened, burning hand. It is all she is, all that exists; the pain throbbing up into her shoulder and down her spine, the sizzle bubbling in her ears, the smell sticking itself to her nostrils.

 

 _We are not so different, you and I_ , her enemy had told her in his Vala’s voice, half a song and half a touch, his whisper echoing off the walls for too long, too long—and had it shuddered through the air to rattle the walls, or filled her mind to set it shaking? had his lips moved at all? she cannot recall—and that was the beginning, before she fell silent, before she learned, and so she had cursed his name and disagreed. Maedhros thought herself righteous, thought herself good—thought herself _better_ , at least, than the bane of the Noldor.

 

But she is burning now, burning as he had burned when his rough, blackened fingers were on her chin, tilting her face up into the light of her father’s works upon his brow. They had not hurt her eyes then, but then is not now. And if the abused is the abuser, if the tormented is the tormentor, if they are not so different, he and she, then what use is there fighting? She has already lost.

 

There is no regret when Maedhros runs, when she jumps. How she excels, at keeping promises.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Maglor, the histories will say, does not die. Maglor, the histories will say, wanders ever upon the shores, singing in pain and regret beside the waves, coming never back among the Elves.

 

But death, if you like, can be a metaphor, either in lightly taken humor or the expression of deep feeling. Giving up could be considered a death; one could even make a parallel of it, citing her grandmother. And Maglor _does_ give up. Before she ever reaches the shore. It is satire, really; the strong-voiced of Finwë, and her lungs can’t unlock until Maedhros has already jumped, is already falling.

 

If giving up is a death, then she dies with her sister.

 

(She wonders what she truly knows of giving up. Maglor had come upon her elder as her glazed contemplation of the pit of flames had ended, as she rose unsteadily to her feet. Neither of them were whole, by then; neither of them could withstand the burning. But then she ran, ran straight to the lip of the earth—and Maglor had run after, and she distinctly remembers yelling no, yelling for her to stop, for her to wait, but the sound of the words had snagged onto her clavicle and risen no further, not until the scream that tore loose when Maedhros’ legs carried her into a freefall and hers went boneless underneath her. She wonders also if that was a true example of giving up, giving out—there seemed too much resolve. Maglor has had years to think it over, and she still does not know.)

 

(And she still does not know why, why couldn’t she say anything, say _something_? It was _important_. And she still hasn’t figured out why she didn’t jump after Maedhros, and she still hasn’t forgiven her for _leaving_. She still doesn’t know why she doesn’t at least attempt to take a ship West. She still can’t tell if she’s just committing herself to a poetic fade from history or if she really does need to keep screaming at breakers, because she still isn’t accustomed to being alone, although she’s still developed an aversion to being near anyone. She still regrets _everything_ , she still _hates_ everything--she still hasn’t forgiven the futility of the First Age and it still strikes her as a shame that all Fëanorians are remembered for are Kinslayings. And in her Oath, she still regrets throwing away the Silmaril, resents Eärendil, and her hand is still useless and the burn is still fresh and still hurts. And, and, she can still work herself into small frenzies, only now it is not because she is struggling to put both emotion and intent into both words and notes and therefore assumes she has lost any artistic ability she has ever possessed. Now she is not in Tirion, and now there is no Celegorm to call her a fool or father to debate aesthetic with; no Caranthir to tell her to just make her point already or mother to watch work for distraction. There is nothing. There is _no one_ , and she should have jumped, she should still, only every time she lets herself fall face-first in the shallows she is instinctually too much of a coward to let her lungs burn for longer than a minute. Maybe she thinks she deserves enduring; self-imposed punishment is still punishment, after all.)

 

But. In a literal sense, she does not die, and in a sense, histories are stories, and they are…diplomatic. (She would know; she has realized her habit of willfully skewing her perspective; her mother always maintained some artistic liberty made for a better figure in the end, if the end was perfect beauty.) In reality, Maglor has not sung in years. Her wanderings stay to the sea, yes, and there is a lovely, skewed symmetry there—for all that she is sure the Lord of Waters no longer heeds her—because the minstrels of Aman studied their art by the sea, parsing the words of Ulmo and hearing most clearly the song of their beginning. She had noticed it as she murdered the Teleri in Alqualondë, too; had recognized the buildings she had wandered, with the children of her youngest uncle.

 

 But.

 

The narrative strays.

 

She has not sung in years. Even before her wanderings; looking back, she has not truly practiced her art since before the Darkening. There was too much war, too much Oath; too much fate, too much murder. The Noldolantë…looking back, and being honest, the Noldolantë was distraction, alleviation, justification. The Noldolantë is also, objectively, the most epic thing she has accomplished. So it goes.

 

Her art was never her purpose. She is, perhaps, more tired than she was when she walked to the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean and there pitched the Silmaril into the waves, but she was much more distraught. Her purpose had been to find a way to alleviate some of the pressure shrinking her lungs before she suffocated, before her head shattered from the throb building at the base of her skull, pounding behind her eyes—and her voice has ever been her vessel. Maglor has spent most of these long years shrieking at the sky at such a pitch the gulls sometimes spiraled to the ground in disoriented landing, screaming full and guttural into her knees until she is forced to stop, hacking blood. If word or aim ever entered in, it was the coincidence of the destitute.

 

In fact, Maglor could not sing even if she wanted to; she can hardly speak, for all she still on occasion finds the capability to scream. She wasted her voice years ago. It is lost to her now. Perhaps that is a death.

 

She now walks upon the sand with bare, callused feet in silence. The sound of breaking waves is a monotonous, lonely sound, and the strains of Song fill Maglor with nothing but deep-seated melancholy. She walks aimless, ignoring the pull to scan the green-blue ocean for the Silmaril she forsook, or the need to climb to the highest point about her when Vingilótë chases its circuit through the sky, abandoning herself to the Darkness if and when it takes her.

 

Maglor can descry no end this way, nor want of it, and so from history she will eventually pass into legend. She, Kinslayer, will be a warning; she, Wanderer, a mariners’ myth. There is a high-toned tragedy to having no ending, not even a memorable one. Lives ago, she would have appreciated the narrative potency, before she knew what it would take for someone to roam, unceasingly, over millennia.

 

But.

 

The narrative runs ahead of itself.

 

 It fell to her, upon that sheer-faced, windblown crag, to fulfil the fate of the Silmarils, to bring the last to its final home. There could be, if not redemption, then at least some salvaged dignity in such high, tragic poetry. But Maglor did not parse it, took years to see it, did not _want_ it, because she cast the jewel into the sea because she was in pain, she hurt, in her heart and her body and her hand and her head. She was, for once, too tired, much too tired to salvage something noble from the end to carry her into the beginning.

 

And death, if you like, can be a metaphor.

 

 

 

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Well there that went. 
> 
> I realize I left Curufin to an outside POV, but it rather worked better that way. If I continue this, I definitely plan to explore Curvo more, in different context. 
> 
> The quote I used up top is from the poem Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath. I refrained from putting the whole poem up there because apparently there are things I won't do, but the vibe is incredible. Here's a link to it; such coincidence, much convenience, wow:
> 
> https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/lady-lazarus
> 
> I also draw; lot of elves, lot of rule 63, so pop by my tumblr if you're interested. I'm erotetica there.


End file.
